The League Managers’ Association awards the highest honor in London, but there is no guarantee that he will be the Premier League title-winning manager.
Mikel Arteta takes the Premier League winners to the Champions League final against Paris Saint-Germain (Image: Getty Images)
One of the most colorful end-of-season events takes place on Tuesday night at Park Lane. This is the 34th League Managers Association (LMA) Annual Awards Dinner in Mayfair, where members of the four tiers of full-time professional football will be recognized before the main winners are recognized.
After voting by members, the LMA Manager of the Year for the 2025/26 season will be announced. Since the award was introduced in 1993, any manager from any division can win the award, although there has been a noticeable bias towards the Premier League.
Of the 33 winners, only seven have been given the seasonal honor at clubs outside of the top flight, the most recent being Kieran McKenna in 2024. The Ipswich Town manager topped the LMA poll after finishing second in the Championship, ahead of Josep Guardiola, who won his fourth consecutive Premier League title and sixth in total.
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That can certainly cause some strange problems, like winning the LMA Manager of the Year award. In the 2000-01 season, Alex Ferguson won his third Premier League title on a spin and seventh in total, while Gerard Houllier’s Liverpool won the FA Cup, League Cup and UEFA Cup.
However, this famous duo was not considered for the award. George Burley finished fifth in the Premier League with Ipswich, winning LMA honors. In the 2004-05 season, Jose Mourinho won the Premier League and League Cup with Chelsea, but David Moyes was named LMA Manager of the Year after Everton finished fourth.
The following season, Chelsea and Mourinho defended their Premier League title. Steve Coppell won the championship with Reading and took home the LMA Award of Excellence.
David Moyes has won the same number of LMA Manager of the Year awards as Pep Guardiola (Image: Naomi Baker, Getty Images)
Moyes has won the LMA Manager of the Year award three times. This is the same number as Guardiola and three more than Mourinho.
Arne Slott won the award last season, but his colleagues were clearly aware of how difficult it was to win the Premier League title in his first season as an English football executive. This season, Mikel Arteta’s fellow managers will realize just how difficult it is to win the Premier League in his sixth full season as English football manager, having suffered several frustrating near-misses and having to deal with competition from the greatest manager in the game.
Well, it’s tough when the world and its wives are waiting for your team to choke. There are many very worthy candidates for the Manager of the Year award.
What Andy Woodman has achieved with Bromley is extraordinary and Lincoln City’s 103 points in League One is a testament to Michael Skbara’s efforts. Frank Lampard’s championship win with Coventry City after recovering from the playoff woes was very impressive, and the performances of Andoni Iraola, Regis Le Bris and Keith Andrews in the Premier League were outstanding.
Unai Emery has been touted as a candidate for manager of the year after Aston Villa’s Europa League win (Image: Aston Villa FC 2026)
Manager Unai Emery made a late breakthrough as Aston Villa won the Europa League. But Arteta has organized his team to concede just 27 goals in the Premier League and, even more impressively, just six ahead of next Saturday’s Champions League final against Paris Saint-Germain in Budapest.
He led Arsenal to the Carabao Cup final and the FA Cup last eight. Regardless of the result in Budapest, it was a great season. And that was against the backdrop of skepticism about his ability to succeed at the top.
His mental strength is shared by his players and is key to Arsenal’s success. There are certainly plenty of worthy candidates to be named Manager of the Year by the League Managers Association across all four divisions…but none more deserving than Arteta.
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